Frankenstein's Fix: When in Doubt, Try Banging on It!

After all these years, at the height of our technology lies a simple solution to many problems: Blunt force.

This is my oscilloscope: a 1966 15Mhz Tektronix Type 422.

Vintage 1966 15Mhz Tektronix Type 422

When I bought my oscilloscope for twenty dollars, it was dead. Someone had tried to stick ten pounds of fuse into a one-pound fuse holder and subsequently broke the fuse holder. I replaced the fuse holder with a non-standard fuse holder and a fuse of the recommended type and rating, thus returning the instrument to a functioning capacity.

Vintage scope with new fuse holder.

Now, the Tektronix Type 422 Oscilloscope is a fine instrument of quality manufacture, but I would like to try some of those new features they've come up with since the moon landing -- features like 200MHz bandwidth, 1GS/s, 4 analog channels, 16 digital channels, automated measurements, and FFT analysis that are provided by the Tektronix MSO2024B digital oscilloscope that is the prize of this contest, so I'm going to tell you this story.

One day, I received a message from manufacturing that they had an instrument that was dead and that they required the assistance of my superior technical skills and extensive engineering knowledge acquired through advanced education and years of experience. So, I put on my anti-static smock and my anti-static shoe straps and grabbed my trusty DVM with the very pointy probes and headed down to manufacturing to render said assistance.

Upon arriving in manufacturing and being shown the instrument, I asked the manufacturing engineer what was wrong with the device. He replied, "If I knew that, I would not require the assistance of your superior technical skills and extensive engineering knowledge acquired through advanced education and years of experience."

So, I asked, "Well what's the problem?" He said, "It's dead." I said, "Well, what did you try?" He said, "I replaced all the boards with known good boards and the power supply with a known good power supply and it is still dead."

He spilled the beans. I knew he would crack under my relentless questioning.

As I sat down by the instrument, I bumped the table, which caused the screen to blink. So I banged on the table, causing the screen to blink again. I continued to bang on the table making the screen blink much to the amusement of the technicians working behind me. I did not care because I had a nibble and I was going to play it out before I got lost in the labyrinth of the innards of the device.

Handy troubleshooting technique.

After several minutes of judicious banging, the screen came up and stayed on. I heard from behind me someone guffaw, "He's got it working," followed by laughter from the peanut gallery. I then took my pen and poked at the cables in the device until I found one that caused the screen to malfunction. I shut down the instrument and removed the cable.

Then, using my superior technical skills and extensive engineering knowledge acquired through advanced education and years of experience, and using my trusty DVM with the very pointy probes, I determined that the cable was indeed defective; knowledge of which I imparted on the manufacturing engineer, thus proving the old adage that it is not enough to think outside the box. Sometimes you have to bang on the side.

So please kindly consider my submission, though it is as badly stitched together as Frankenstein's monster (if Dr. Frankenstein had used duct tape) and send me that fancy new Tektronix MSO2024B digital oscilloscope that is the prize of this contest. I'm sure it will help in repairing those instruments I cannot fix by banging on the table.

Submit your product repair or redesign story as part of our Frankenstein's Fix competition on EE Life and you could win a Tektronix MSO2024B digital oscilloscope!! Deadline is October 26, 2013.Submission details and full contest rules here.

When I was in high school a long time ago, I was one of three students in charge of the school's video system. This consisted of an open reel VTR, some audio gear, an RF modulator and a B&W camera. The camera was a modified surveillance camera which had a string of 2N706A transistors operating as the video amps. These transistors were socketed, and the sockets had little if any plating on them so the camera would occasionally get intermittent.

One day I was pulled out of english class to fix an equipment problem in the drama class across the hall. When I arrived there I found the students gathered around the dead camera, waiting for someone to fix it so they could continue with their play. I knew about those intermittent transistor sockets so I approached the camera and gave it a good whack on it's right side. A few of the students gasped at my actions but the camera sprang back to life! I received a hearty round of applause from the class, took a bow, and went back to my english class.

Back long ago when Apple came out with the Apple ///, they used sockets for the RAM and EPROM chips. The sockets were not quite the right thing, and with shipping vibration and maybe thermal on-off stresses the chips would walk their way out of their sockets. Apple recommended that if the computer got flaky, you should try picking it up and dropping it like 4 inches. This was a kinda heavy box, like 30 pounds, with non-squishy rubber feet, so if you do the math, 4 inches of acceleration, followed by aprupt decceleration over a distance of maybe .04 inches, that's 100G's pressing down on the chips. Probably did the trick, but oh man, what a cheesy repair technique.

Many long years ago, prior to my engineering career, I was a service tech for Sony corp, servicing recorders, mostly. We had a very standard service procedure, and about the third step was to slap the tape deck while it was playing. The slap would reveal a number of problems, the most common being a bad record-play switch. If the slap test revealed a noise, the next step was a blast of contact cleaner, which, if that fixed the problem, indicated that the switch needed replacing because the silver plating on the contacts had worn off and the switch had become intermittant. The slap would also reveal a broken connection to the tape head, which that piece of #30 stranded wire would beak under constant flexing if the routing was not exactly correct. And a different sort of noise from one channel would indicate that a soldered board connection had broken and needed to be resoldered.

So that gentle slap would provide a diagnosis of many faults, with a minimum of tech time.

It's always a problem. Had two similar experiences just in the last week. My PC (an ancient XP machine I cobbled together with begged and scrounged bits) is a bit flaky and sometimes fails to boot. Percussive maintenance usually works. I have been running it with the case off and by a method similar to that in the story, determined that it's the video card that is the problem Since I reseated it in the slot, no more problems (cross fingers, grab nearest bit of wood :-)

And my label printer exhibits similar problems. Take battery cover off, rotate all the (AA) batteries half a turn or so, and it's good for another few labels.

If electronic equipment never failed, I'd be out of a job. So long may it continue!

Caleb Kraft- I certainly hope the moving pcb problems have gone away, no doubt aided by higher levels of intergration and surface mount. However, here are two similar that happened to me today. Went to use the scanner, up came the message your C4280 is not connected. I knew it (expletive deleted) well was, so I rebooted still the same then found that in moving a nest of cables that links this office together I had moved the USB slightly out of its socket. I know, go Wifi.

Well decided to watch my Smart TV and although it responds to my voice and various hand waving signals I decided to use the remote. Nothing happened, couple of sharp taps on the table and the connection between me and the world of TV was restored. (the old battery/spring problem)

Wise and no doubt experienced. I can remember visiting an instrument (scopes and the like) hire company in the UK. Their business model required that they kept detailed records of repair call-outs for the equipent out on hire. Those records showed that irrespective of original instrument manufacturer, most repair call-outs were in the first few days after delivery. While the hire company diligently serviced their customers requests one of the engineers at the hire company gave the following insight, "In most cases a good bang on the case would have solved the problem". The problem that is of boards and connectors moving in transit. It is to be hoped modern instruments have for the most part dealt with this problem.